M.G.M.’s LION DIES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 124, 11 May 1935, Page 14

M.G.M.’s LION DIES

Leo, the M.G.M. lion, is dead, announces the American “Motion Picture Herald.” He succumbed to heart disease in the Philadelphia Zoo the other day, at the age of 20. Leo was captured as a very young lion (aged one) on the Nubian Deserts of Africa, and was taken to America originally for ex hibition in menageries and zoos. Holly wood used him for various scenes in early jungle films. But his career properly began only when M.G.M. chose him lo form the central figure of their now familiar trade mark, with which each M.G.M. picture opens. In silent-film days he did no more than turn his head at the opening of each picture. With the coming of the talkies his roar became a familiar sound to millions.

Leo was the first lion to be transported in an aeroplane. He was also a passenger on steamships, trains, and oxcarts, and once was flung across a camel’s back to take him across the desert.

An affecting picture is drawn of important Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer officials earnestly searching for a successor to the late, lamented Leo. Any lion won t do. He must be a lion in a million, with good camera angles, a dignified bearing, and—of course —a microphone roarl Acting ability not necessary, but would be considered an asset.

History does not record how a purely American film company came to adopt for its trade mark an animal as British, by tradition as the bulldog. The Trafalgar Square lions, which wore given a movie chance in “Cavalcade,” might not speak to the M.G.M. lion, but ’■eo was at least as famous as they are He appeared on more cinema screens, in every part of the world, in his time, than any other film “star,” with the one possible exception of Charlie Chap lin.